Tiled floor with baby

[maybebaby2023]

Hi everyone, hope I’ve posted this in the right place.

We are due our first baby in July.

The downstairs of our house is open plan and fully tiled throughout. The tiles are the big, 600 x 600 glossy ones that would probably do serious damage to your head if you were to fall onto them. It’s not our forever home and the tiles were very expensive (laid last year by previous owner) so I’m loathed to rip them up and lay the flooring of our choice for a short time.

I’m already worrying about what will happen when the baby is making attempts to walk, etc. With it being about 40-50sqm it wouldn’t be practical to put rugs everywhere. The only other thing I’d thought of is those foam jigsaw tiles but we’d need a serious amount. I wondered if anyone else had encountered this problem and had any ideas of a solution? This must be quite common in sunnier climes…? I had thought of a cheap carpet but not even sure you could lay it on top of tiles without damaging them. thanks in advance!

We have a totter + tumble mat, which is nicely padded. That would be good if you have living room bit, or the main bit where the baby will be playing. You can get room separator type baby gates/ play pen to section off one area.

Don’t worry too much yet though, the baby won’t be going anywhere on their own for the first few months.

Get a Totter and Tumble mat

Your baby will prefer to be on the soft squishy and warm mat to the tiles when they are sitting and playing, and the tiles will be fine once they start crawling and walking

It’s only a relatively short period that they are likely to topple over so definitely don’t go changing any flooring

We have a brick floor in our kitchen, and my DD survived the 'learning to walk' phase just fine - they're pretty resilient and they never fall that far as they're so small. Agree with the advice to get a mat, as baby will automatically gravitate to that. Just make sure you have socks with anti-slip bottoms, as that'll help them grip.

• our kitchen is very large, and like yours, open plan, so it was the room we were in the most, but honestly, she was fine

We have original flagstones. DS 18mo didn’t crack his head open learning to walk. Unlike PP we didn’t get a specific toddler mat, but we did have a rug in the living area.

Get a rug or a playmat and when they start to stand get them socks with grip on the bottom.

Foam camping mats (the super cheap basic kind) are good.

Not at the mobile stage yet but we have found a large foam playmat useful. Even before the baby is mobile it's useful to have somewhere comfortable for you to sit on the floor eg if changing nappies on the floor, sitting with baby while they are lying on a playmat or doing tummy time etc.

Munchkin and Bear make some with attractive (not childish) designs but I'm sure some of the cheaper options are good too. Less ugly than the jigsaw tiles in my opinion.

A mat is better than carpet or a rug in my opinion as it's easier to wipe clean.

our ground floor is completely tiled. Large rug in living area and while she was toddling we had a rug at the bottom of the stairs in case she fell down. Other than that grippy socks and your lo will be fine.

Our kitchen floor is tiled and I got those foam squares; we partitioned part of the kitchen off with a play pen fence type thing and put the foam tiles there. As DS got older I put them next to the sofa where he was likely to pull himself up and fall.